Hearing deficiencies can range from partial hearing impairment to complete hearing loss. Often, an individual's hearing ability varies across the range of audible sound frequencies, and many individuals have hearing impairment with respect to only select acoustic frequencies. For example, an individual's hearing loss may be greater at higher frequencies than at lower frequencies.
Hearing aids are electronic devices worn on or within the user's ear and configured by a hearing health professional to modulate sounds to produce an audio output signal that compensates for the user's hearing loss. The hearing health professional typically takes measurements using calibrated and specialized equipment to assess the individual's hearing capabilities in a variety of sound environments, and then adjusts (configures) the hearing aid based on the calibrated measurements. Subsequent adjustments to the hearing aid can require a second assessment of the user's hearing and further calibration by the hearing health professional, which can be costly and time intensive. In some instances, the hearing health professional may create multiple hearing profiles for the user for execution by the hearing aid in different sound environments.
However, merely providing stored hearing profiles may leave the user with a subpar hearing experience because each acoustic environment may vary in some way from the stored hearing aid profiles provided by the hearing health professional. Storing more profiles on the hearing aid provides for better potential coverage of various listening environments but requires a larger memory and increased processing capabilities in the hearing aid. Increased memory and enhanced processing increase the size requirements of the hearing aid that users prefer to be small and unobtrusive.
In the following description, the use of the same reference numerals in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.